


We Just Declared War

by stormwreath



Category: Aliens (1986), Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Crossover, Drama, Gen, S8 Comics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-30
Updated: 2008-03-29
Packaged: 2017-10-05 00:17:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormwreath/pseuds/stormwreath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buffy has hunted demons before. She's seen her share of killing and death. But when she crosses through a portal to confront her nightmare, she discovers that this time, it's not just another big bad to fight. Not just a battle. This time, it's war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bughunt

Buffy hates portals. She associates them with death and suffering. Killing Angel. Her own death (the second time, if you're counting). Those creepy old guys who tried to demon-rape her. None of it good. So as she steps through this one, crossbow at the ready, she is prepared for the worst.

What she does find is icy wind and pouring rain that instantly plasters her hair to her scalp. As water begins to trickle down inside the back of her bulky jacket she raises her eyes to the cold grey sky and sighs in resignation.

"Huh. Figures."

* * *

It began with a dream, a few days earlier. The sort of dream that would convince a _normal_ person they were going mad; but she's given up pretending she could ever be normal long ago. A dream about a rip torn in reality, and a horde of demons pouring through killing and maiming and slaughtering. Trying to destroy the world. As per.

She already knew what to expect, so she had rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Swung out of bed and slipped into her dressing gown. Sure enough, a few minutes later there was a hesitant knock on her door, and she'd opened it to find Leah and Rowena standing there, wide-eyed and anxious and ready to report the exact same dream.

They were both trying to look competent and professional, but she saw the relief in their eyes as she took charge. Rowena was sent to wake Xander (let him suffer too!), because the communications room would need to be manned; Slayers would soon be calling in from all over the world. Leah's job was to go back to the dorms, ask the girls to begin writing down their memories of the dream. Buffy promised to go down and talk to them as soon as she was dressed.

With the door closed again she sank down on her bed and sighed. Another day, another apocalypse. She shrugged off her nightclothes as she walked over to her ensuite bathroom - one of the privileges of rank she was truly grateful for - and got herself ready.

Having several hundred versions of the same Slayerdream was actually pretty useful. Because everyone remembered slightly different details, they could build up a comprehensive picture of the threat. That was just as well, actually, because none of the reference books listed these particular demons. They were big and slimy and vaguely insectoid, if insects could have long, vicious jaws and wicked barbed tails. And there were a lot of them. A hell of a lot. Some of the Slayers had received an impression of some huge great Mama Bug in the background, laying countless eggs that hatched into more demons. Which explained why there were so many of them, and also suggested an obvious way to defeat the threat. Find the portal, hop through, kill Mama, clean up the rest. Easy.

Of course things are never that simple, are they? They'd tracked down the location of the portal from clues in the dream, and luckily it was still closed. Willow seemed to think it would open at a particular time - "When the stars are right", Andrew interjected; he obviously thought that was a really clever and meaningful comment, and looked like a crushed puppy when everyone else just looked blank. The good news was, the mystics seemed to think they'd be able to open the portal early, just enough for a person to squeeze through, and then seal it again.

The bad news was, when they said "a person" they meant just that. One person. Willow had been all apologetic and said she could try to find a way to make it bigger; but that might risk letting the demons out as well. So Buffy had decided to go in alone. 

She'd solemnly promised she'd not take risks, and retreat if it was too dangerous; and of course there would be an army of Slayers waiting on the other side of the portal in case the demons broke through. But truth be told, she was secretly glad of the opportunity to be by herself. The Chosen One, just like it used to be. She was of course unspeakably grateful for the support of her sister-Slayers and her friends, and wouldn't be without them for the world. But just sometimes, having to be the leader all the time was wearing. Forcing herself to always seem strong and confident, even when things went wrong. Even when people died. Hearing people had been killed and it was her fault - she who had sent them into danger, she who sent them to their deaths... it got to her. And so maybe she had something to prove to herself here; prove she was still willing to put her own life on the line...

Prove she was willing to get soaked to the skin, at any rate.

* * *

_What is this place, anyway?_ Rather to her surprise, she isn't in a desert or rocky cavern or demonic hellscape; in fact, she seems to be standing in some kind of village or settlement. Concrete walls and sheet metal roofs stretch up high all around her, and the rain clatters off the buildings and turns the narrow street to mud.

The demons in her vision hadn't seemed intelligent enough to build something like this - though the drab depressing architecture is hellish enough in its way. Maybe there's a second demon race living here, using the first as their army? Or maybe this dimension's equivalent of humans built this village. Regardless, there doesn't seem to be anyone around. Probably sheltering inside from the rain, which is very sensible of them. Probably where she should be too... and that way she might also get a better idea of what's going on.

So she trudges shivering down the street, thankful for the thickness of her kevlar jacket. She still thinks the things are ugly, but they've already saved the lives of several Slayers, and so she's decided to set an example to the troops by wearing her own into battle. At least it's warm. Hooking her crossbow to her backpack alongside the Scythe, she pulls on gloves too, and keeps her eyes peeled for a door of some sort.

What she actually finds answers one question, and raises several more: a printed sign over a metal door says "General Store". In English. So this is probably a human village, and she is apparently in some sort of parallel world. She does hope she isn't about to meet herself, because that would just be too freaky. Especially if her double turns out to be some leather bondage dominatrix type, because Willow will be insufferable once she knows.

She pushes the door, which swings open silently, and steps inside. A harsh buzzing sounds in her ears, and bright fluorescent light dazzles her eyes. She stands blinking, waiting for her sight to adjust. Instinct screams for her to draw her crossbow, but she fights it back. This is a shop, the owner might be armed, might call the police...

She steps forward and her foot crunches down on something that _squishes_... the crossbow instantly is in her hands, and damn the consequences.

Now she can see again; and the room is a mess. Overturned shelves. Food and supplies scattered on the floor. No people.

No living people, at any rate.

Clearly there's been a fight here. She can't see any bodies, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. Across the back of the room is a large, solid counter. She walks cautiously over to it.

Leans on it, peering over the edge. Nothing.

Except... eww. The counter is _sticky_. She lifts her hand, and stringy grey slime clings to her glove like glue. Eww eww eww. She looks around for a cloth, and finding none, scrapes her hand over the edge of the counter, scrubbing away the slime.

Okay, this is creepy. She has a nasty feeling the inhabitants of this village have already met the demons of her dream. But where are the bodies?

And more importantly, where are the demons?

Behind the counter is a door marked "Staff only". She levels her crossbow, approaches it carefully...kicks it in. The door slams back on its hinges with an echoing crash.

Behind it is a huge storage room. More of a warehouse, really. Transparent panels on the high roof let in dim grey light, given a murky submarine quality by the water streaming across them. In places the roof sealing leaks, and water drips down the walls and makes the floor slippery. 

She walks cautiously into the row between two racks. Metal frameworks loaded with crates loom up high either side of her. Somewhere in the distance, metal clinks against metal. Probably just the wind.

She reaches a crossing, looks around. Forward, left, right, each direction unpromising; more towering caverns of boxes stretching into dim greyness.

A sudden instinct makes her spin around...  
Gaze back the way she's come...

And stare into the face of nightmare.

It is huge. Glistening black. Uncoiling from the highest racks with evil, silent grace. Hungry jaws slaver, dripping sticky slime as it looms out of the darkness.

Buffy aims and fires without hesitation.

The crossbow bolt skates off chitinous armour, and the creature screams with high-pitched rage. And charges.

It's demonically fast, and Buffy scarcely manages to dodge the first sweep of its claws. But then its tail swings around, whipping into her side with a crushing blow that would have caved in the ribs of any normal person. Winded, she gasps in pain, and the crossbow flies from her hands and clatters uselessly to the floor. The demon whirls, squealing its warcry again; acting more by instinct than planning Buffy reaches out as it lunges and grabs it by the throat, holding its wicked fanged jaws away from her face with all her strength.

She stares up into deep-set black eyes, dull like those of an insect; and feels sure she is looking at a mere animal. But the creature seems to pause, and tilts its head to one side, as if studying her curiously. For a long lifetime - or a few seconds - human and demon regard each other.

Then the thing's tongue shoots out and teeth clash barely an inch from her frantically averted face. Teeth! It has teeth in its _tongue_! Way gross!

Again the hideous appendage strikes at her head, but this time she's ready. Her free hand shoots out, grabbing the demon's tongue; she braces her arm then _pulls_ hard as she can. Rips its tongue out by the roots. The demon screeches in agony, collapsing to the ground, yellowish blood gouting from its ruined mouth. Buffy flings the lifeless, twitching organ in her hand aside, then winces in sudden sharp pain as some of the blood splashes over her arm. 

Shaking it frantically, she grabs the Scythe from her back and swings it one-handed. The demon's head is severed from its body, and more blood runs hissing out onto the ground.

And starts melting its way into the floor.

Buffy looks at her arm. The angry red marks on her skin are already starting to fade, but there are a couple of holes in her sleeve big enough to put her finger through. She thinks ruefully about her wardrobe back at home, and the likely impossibility of finding decent replacement clothes in this hellhole parallel dimension.

Then she panics, and swings the blade of the Scythe up to study it more carefully, dreading what she might see. Yellow blood coats it and drips smoking off the edge; but the glittering blade is as shiny and unblemished as ever. Undamaged.

She breathes a heartfelt sigh of relief. "Yay for ancient mystical craftsmanship!"

She carefully wipes the Scythe clean on a nearby box - ruining the box in the process - then slings it again, walking over to pick up her crossbow from where it had fallen.

"Nasty critter."

She looks around cautiously. Peering into the dimness, she stares down the long aisles. To the left. To the right.

"Let's hope..."

She looks behind her again, then forwards. Everything seems still and quiet, except for the constant thrum of rain on the roof.

          "...there aren't any..."

And then slowly, inevitably, her eyes are drawn _upwards_ towards the steel roofbeams.

                                 "...more of them.

"Oh, _crap._"

 


	2. Let's Rock

There would be a sinister beauty in the sight, if it weren't so terrifying. At least a dozen of the long, black sinuous shapes slowly stretching, uncurling from the rafters. Almost as if the steel beams themselves are coming to life. Evil, deadly life.

Buffy backs slowly towards the distant doorway. Judging distances and angles. Making no sudden moves.

One of the demons stares right at her, hisses.

Her crossbow bolt catches it square in the eye. It squeals in agony and falls twitching to the ground as Buffy frantically reloads. The others are dropping down more slowly from the roof. Unhurried, sure of their prey. 

She suddenly turns and runs full-tilt for the exit. A black slimy shape rears up before her and she fires from the hip without slowing. The monster goes down, spurting acidic yellow blood as she leaps clean over it, flings herself through the door. Back out into the street, slamming the steel door behind her. As she does a heavy body slams into it, almost shaking it off its hinges.

She backs off, reloading again. Hopefully they'd be too dumb to...

The demon hisses evilly as it operates the latch to open the door, peers around, sees her.

"Shit. So much for that theory."

Her crossbow twangs again as she aims for the slimy chinks in the chitin exoskeleton armouring the demon. It goes down in a heap, but another replaces it, and there are more coming, and she can't reload fast enough. Her last bolt catches one in the throat, and she throws the useless crossbow aside. Draws the Scythe. Two demons lunge for her at once, and she frantically dodges one, swings the Scythe around in a backhand blow that cuts the other in half. Its blood spurts out, causing its companion to squeal in desperate agony as its own flesh melts; but there is no time for triumph; more are coming. One rakes its claws and scores bloody gashes on Buffy's leg; she almost falls, turning her movement into a duck and roll that brings her up behind her attacker. The Scythe impales it; she yanks it out desperately to parry a whipping tail just as another of the monsters sinks its fanged tongue into her shoulder.

Her eyes fill with tears of agony; she frantically punches upwards, knocking the demon away and losing a chunk of her own flesh as she does. The Scythe carves a glittering arc of death around her; but it is slowing now, its blows weaker, less precise. She is surrounded by dead and dying demons, but there seem no end to their numbers, and she is only one woman: and mortal, however strong. She summons up her last reserves of courage and determination, forcing her battered body through the steps of its deadly dance. They might kill her, but they will never defeat her...

A sound like ripping cloth magnified a thousand times comes from nowhere. 

And half a dozen demons tear apart into bloody shreds in seconds flat.

"Fuck yeah! Rock and roll!"

"Do your job, asshole. Watch my back."

Again the noise. Again, demons die. The few survivors flee squealing, but there is no escape from the death that leaps out to claim them.

"All right! See how you like it, you fuckers! Eat that!"

"Can it, Hudson."

Buffy looks around at the odd couple standing at the end of the street. They are both dressed in bedraggled, soaking wet military uniforms... and the woman is holding the biggest gun Buffy has ever seen. For a moment, she feels a pure twinge of rocket-launcher envy, which she sternly suppresses. The woman notices her, stares in shock.

"The fuck? Looks like another civilian survived. Hey, man, you got to rescue a colonist's daughter after all."

"I'm not-- " she stops. Telling the truth about who she is? Probably a bad idea. "Yeah. You guys from the army?"

"Colonial Marines. You wanna tell us what the hell you're doing out here, chica?"

"Surviving. You got somewhere safe to go?"

"Fuck, man, she's right. Be dark soon, Vasquez, we gotta get back undercover. She said those things come out at night, mostly. There'll be more of them..."

"We'll finish our sweep." The woman - Vasquez - speaks into a radio mike clipped to her ear, nods in acknowledgement, continues her report. Buffy takes the opportunity to retrieve her crossbow.

"What the fuck's that? Shit, girl - uh, ma'am - what do you think mediaeval ironmongery's gonna do against these things? We got state of the art firepower and we still got our asses kicked."

Stung, Buffy retorts sharply, "I killed four of them with it." She reads disbelief in his eyes, shrugs angrily. "So what happened to you? What was with the ass-kicking?"

"Dumbfuck lieutenant got most of the squad killed." Vasquez has finished her report, and now speaks with a voice icy with contempt. "If you stayed alive this long, don't care how you did it. Come on. Hicks says to report back soonest."

"Hicks?"

"Corporal Hicks." She suddenly grins evilly, remembering something. "He's got the authority now, of what's left of us. Eight, with the kid. Nine with you. You really kill 'em with that thing?"

Buffy nods.

"Damn. We need to get you a gun, then. You ever use one?"

Her stock response dies on her lips. After seeing the demons close-up, she's starting to think that maybe there _are_ a few situations where guns could actually be quite useful indeed. At least here, in this parallel dimension...

"Do you have another big one like yours?"

 

As it turns out, they don't. The same massacre that wiped out the rest of the squad also destroyed most of their heavy weapons. Which kind of puts paid to Buffy's plan of recruiting the marines to help her hunt down and destroy the big Mommy demon, assuming she actually exists. Not that this rag-taggle bunch of survivors is likely to be much help in a fight either, since they seem more interested in bickering with each other than actually fighting the monsters.

It makes Buffy feel right at home, actually.

At least she's been spared one thing she'd been dreading - thinking up a cover story to explain her presence here. The only person left out of the village's former inhabitants turns out to be a painfully shy (or, possibly, traumatised) six-year old girl who apparently rejoices in the name of Newt. Not that Buffy feels herself in a position to criticise anyone else for their odd-sounding name, of course. Newt barely speaks a word, certainly not "Who's she?" or "I've never seen her before in my life, how did she get here?" The rest of the group seem to accept Buffy as another survivor without much question. They have other things on their minds, to be honest.

Like the forty megaton nuclear explosion that is apparently going to blow them all to very small fragments of radioactive debris in about three hours' time.

"You're nuking the dem--, uh, _damned_ alien... thingies? Top marks for proactiveness, really. But, uh, shouldn't we be a long, long way away from the explosion first?"

"Not our choice. The atmosphere processor is going critical." That soft-spoken voice belongs to Corporal Hicks, whose air of quiet competence impresses Buffy. He actually kinda reminds her of Riley, and she feels herself smiling warmly at him.

"Don't worry, honey. There's a dropship on its way down, it'll get us away safe." The woman speaking - some kind of civilian consultant with the marines by the name of Ripley - is trying to comfort Buffy, who feels oddly annoyed by the implication that she needs it. The woman then adds to Hicks, "Watching the blast from orbit is the safest way, after all. " They smile at each other in some kind of shared private joke, and Buffy feels a wholly irrational surge of jealousy. She stands up, wanting to distance herself from them as much as possible; then winces in pain as the cumulative injuries from her desperate battle earlier catch up with her.

"You're hurt?"

"It's nothing, really." _Or it will be, once I've had a couple of hours to rest, but I can't tell you that._

"We should get you to MedLab anyway." The new speaker is the other civilian, a handsome young man in expensively casual clothes who nevertheless gives Buffy the kind of creepy feeling she normally associates with the fangs-and-forehead crowd. But he seems harmless enough. "Get your wounds cleaned up, put you under quickheal."

"I don't need--" But now Ripley has joined in too.

"Come on, I'll take you there. It's only a mild sedative, puts you out for an hour or so while your body heals itself. You'll be awake again in plenty of time before we have to go."

Even in this group there are other people she'd rather play doctor with... but arguing too strongly will only raise suspicion. And truth be told, she is all achey, and a rest would be nice. So she lets herself be led off into the high-tech medical laboratory. On the way she decides that trying a little friendliness probably won't hurt, so she tries making conversation... only to be shushed abruptly as they walk through the door. She's just thinking up her best cutting remark in reply when Ripley points, an uncharacteristically tender smile on her face, at the tiny blonde form in the corner. It's Newt, fast asleep, lying on the floor under one of the medical couches, looking impossibly cute and poignant. Buffy feels a matching smile on her own lips as she meets Ripley's eyes.

It is a détente that lasts all of two minutes, as Ripley gathers up medical supplies and Buffy wanders over to investigate the tall glass cylinders in the centre of the room.

"Get away from there!" There is fear and disgust in the peremptory command, and Buffy reacts as she usually does to such instructions. She steps closer.

There is something moving inside one of the cylinders, and she peers in for a closer look. ****_Wham!**_** The shape hits the glass inches from her face, but Buffy doesn't flinch. She is fascinated by the coiled muscle and hunger in such a small creature. Its spindly crablike legs and long whipping tail don't look much like the larger demons she's fought, but she can sense the kinship. It's the killer instinct, the pure predatory urge that can be _contained_ by the glass walls of its cage, but never stilled except by death.

"What's this doing here?"

"It killed one of the colonists. They clamp onto your face, shove themselves down your throat. Lay their eggs inside of you, to eat you away from inside. Hatch out into the adult things you've seen." There is raw hatred in Ripley's voice. "So of course they decided to keep it afterwards. To _study_ it."

"Study is good." Buffy speaks absently, as much intrigued as repulsed, and oblivious to the hostile look Ripley gives her at those words.

"They'll all be dead in three hours anyway. Now come on, let's get those wounds treated."

She isn't gentle, but she is competent. As the quickheal hypo hisses, Buffy feels a lethargy creep through her limbs, weighing her down. The world seems to spin and recede.

"Don't worry, I'll wake you when it's time." Ripley's voice seems to come from a great distance. Through her greying eyesight Buffy sees her kneel on the floor beside Newt, climb under the bed beside her to hold and comfort the small girl. 

It is the last thing she sees before the darkness claims her.


	3. We're In Trouble

She doesn't know what wakes her. Some instinct, a suffocating dream, a distant noise. But her eyes are open and her senses alert instantly, Slayer-sharp. There's danger, somewhere close.

Ripley's awake too, holding the little girl in her arms. She's staring at something on the floor, pure terror in her eyes, and Buffy follow her gaze until she sees it too.

A couple of the tall glass containers, upturned and broken on the floor. Empty.

She reaches for the Scythe where she'd laid it beside her, and her hand closes on nothingness. Where--? It's not on the floor. Not on the other nearby couches. Angry now, she storms over to where Ripley is fiddling with the MedLab doors, all ready to blame her for taking it... when she sees her weapon. Lying placidly on a table just outside the glass walls of the room.

The _locked_ room. They've been trapped in here. Trapped with two hungry demons that like to lay eggs inside you. Oh yeah, and also? The building is going to be ground zero of a nuclear explosion in about two hours' time.

And today started so well. Not. 

Newt starts beating on the glass, trying to break it - a pretty sensible idea for the kid - but when Buffy hurls herself against the window, she bounces. Clearly not normal glass then; some kind of special future technology Slayerproof glass. She's looking around for something hard to hit it with when Newt screams in panic.

Buffy spins around, takes in the situation at a glance. Small girl. Hungry demon. Slayer, five metres away and weaponless. Newt pushes over a table, trying to pin the demon against the wall, but six-year old muscles are no match for its cruel strength.

It does give Buffy the second or two she needs, though. She snatches up a shard of glass from the broken containers. Takes aim, holds her breath, throws. Her aim is true, but her weapon is not so much. It slices through one of the thing's multi-jointed legs, causing it to squall in pain and bunch up, dropping down onto the floor. Just long enough for Newt to flee to the other side of the room.

Weapons. She needs better weapons, and now. Ripley is shouting and waving at one of the CCTV cameras that line the room, with no apparent effect, and Buffy scowls angrily. She's trying to listen for the scuttle of legs, the scrape of chitin against wall or floor, and she doesn't need the distraction...

Wait. There. A magazine, lying on a workbench. She picks it up and starts rolling it tightly, ignoring the shocked, hostile look the older woman suddenly shoots in her direction. What is her _problem_, anyway? At least she's shut up now.

Buffy drifts silently through the room, alert for the slightest noise. Holding her makeshift weapon underarm, pointed down towards the ground. 

Paper is soft and flimsy. A rolled up magazine is useless for swatting anything much larger than a fly. But compress the paper tight enough, and apply force just so, in a perfectly parallel direction... and the paper remembers that it was once a tree.

Movement, in the corner of her eye. Buffy's hand shoots out in a perfectly measured, calculated blow... and all the pent-up supernatural strength of a Slayer is concentrated onto an area one inch in diameter.

The magazine cleaves through the demon's shell and pins it to the wall.

It squeals in agony, and the magazine starts to smoke and char in its acidic blood. Buffy's weapon is literally melting away in her hand. She drops it, grabs the thing's frantically lashing tail. Whirls the demon around her head as she runs full tilt and smashes it hard as she can against the glass wall of the room.

The demon _smushes_. Bits of leg and disgusting innards go everywhere, and a bubbling yellow mess is left on the glass. Which stars, and goes cloudy, and starts to crack. Buffy watches for a moment, a grin of triumph on her face, then kicks out. Her boot shatters the weakened window and they're free! Two birds, one stone. Yay her.

Then the second demon drops from the ceiling and wraps its tail around her throat.

It's unbelievably strong. Breathing is impossible. Its legs claw at her face, trying to clamp on. Somehow she manages to get a hand in the way, fend it off. Its exposed underside looks like wet sushi. An obscene little tube extends, twisting and groping for her mouth. She's starting to black out. Suddenly there are other hands, helping her, trying to pull it off. Voices shouting, scarce heard above the blood roaring in her ears. Her free hand claws at its tail, pulls it back. One blessed sweet gulp of air fills her lungs. Then it's off, and gunfire rings out, almost deafening her, and she's alive.

Hicks smiles at her, gun in hand, but Ripley beside him looks mad as hell, and her voice is cold and deadly as she says "Burke." And Buffy is just wondering why she's using one of Spike's favourite insults on her when she remembers it's the other civilian's name.

And someone set them up to die here.

 

Within minutes, the casually-dressed man is pinned down in the centre of a hostile, panicky and furious crowd of survivors. Ripley's explained what happened; she's talked about smuggled bioweapons and fortunes to be made and unfortunate accidents on the return journey. And Burke is desperately trying to explain himself, but it isn't working. And Buffy is as mad as any of them... until she realises with shock that at least half of the marines are ready to kill him in cold blood. Here and now.

"We can't just kill him! He's human!"

"The fuck we can't. Just watch us!"

"If we murder him in cold blood, what makes us better than the - than _them_?"

"We're _not_ better. You don't see them screwing each other over for a fucking _percentage_."

That tips the balance, and Buffy is just mustering up one futile, final protest as Hicks levels his gun... when all the lights go out. Pitch blackness.

"They cut the power."

Hudson's voice rises up in panic - "What do you mean, they cut the power?  How could they cut the power, man?  They're animals!" - and Buffy instinctively steps in to take command. Taking control of the situation before things fall apart.

"Grab your weapons. How many ways in are there? Which direction will they be coming from?"

Ripley cuts in. "Let's get some trackers going. Hudson, Vasquez, see if you can spot anything." And Buffy, who doesn't know what a tracker is, swallows her pique and manages to say "Good idea".

Red emergency lights come on at this point, bathing the scene in a hellish crimson glow. The two soldiers are holding devices in their hands, which emit a soothing regular electronic ticking. *_bip*  *bip*  *bip*.  
_  
They move out, into the corridor that runs past the operations centre. Cautious and slow.

_*bip*  *bip*  *bip*.  
_  
Buffy wonders if she should pick up a gun. But she hasn't had any time to practice, and she doesn't really know how they work, and it would probably just get in her way. 

_*bip*  *bip*  *bip*.  
_  
Her crossbow is somewhere around. No time to look for it. At least she has the Scythe again.

_*bip*  *bip*  ***BEE-BEEP*  *BEE-BEEP*  
**_  
"I got something."

No shit. The two soldiers are arguing, Vasquez thinking Hudson's misreading his equipment; but then her own tracker picks up the same signal. They're coming. They're inside the perimeter. 

Buffy calls the marines back into the room; it'll be easier to fight if the demons can only come at them through one narrow doorway. Ripley tells Vasquez to seal the door. Buffy can't see the point of that; if they got through the perimeter, they can get through the door, and hiding from evil never works for long. You've got to fight it. Still, it's no time for an argument. Hudson is reading off distances from his tracker. Ten metres. Nine metres. Eight.

"Can't be.  That's inside the room!"

"It's readin' right, man. Look!"

They're still complaining when Buffy figures it out. It's obvious, really; she has first-hand experience at how good these things are at climbing; and besides, the bad guys always find a way in. She's shouting "Get back against the walls!" when the suspended ceiling caves in and a hissing, black, tooth and claw-filled nightmare horde of demons plunges into the room.

Turning it instantly into an inferno. Crimson glow of the emergency lights; glistening slimy carapaces lit up in the strobe-lightning of the muzzle flashes. High pitched demonic squealing, human shouts of pain and terror and anger. Gunfire is deafening, a smell of cordite and sweat and blood chokes away her breath. She kills one with a blow from the Scythe, dodges a second and sees it shredded by the bullets from Hicks' pulse rifle. Turns just in time to impale another on the haft of her weapon, then kick it away into two others.

Then hears someone scream in agony. It's Hudson. He's down, and they're all over him. Buffy doesn't hesitate. Leaps up onto a desk, ready to dive into their midst and drag him away to safety... and a flash of instinct makes her duck down again, just as a burst of autofire rips through the space she'd been occupying a heartbeat earlier. She doesn't even see who pulled the trigger, doesn't care. She remembers why she hates guns, as her momentum carries her painfully back down to the floor. 

She's a Slayer; she rolls with the fall, turns it into a graceful move that carries her past a demon's guard so she can thrust up into its heart, then twist away out of the shower of blood. She's on her feet again, but it's too late, she's lost valuable time.

Hudson is gone.

_Crap._ This is all going to hell. She sees Ripley over by the door leading out to MedLab, and thinks that's the first sensible idea she's had. Tactical retreat. She has to shout a couple of times to make herself heard - "We are leaving!" - but they get the message, backing towards the door, firing as they move. Buffy covers them, hurling herself into the midst of the demons, Scythe chopping left and right around her, expending her energy recklessly to give the others time to escape. She's slaughtering them, but there are more and more pressing in on her... and then she does a standing jump to grab one of the exposed ceiling joists, swings around and flings herself over the heads of a dozen demons to reach the safety of the doorway. Somersaults around and lands on her feet, just as the last marine is out through the door. 

Vasquez gives her a tight smile of approval, then levels her rifle. Does something unusual to it, and Hicks is just shouting "You can't do that--" when the world... _explodes_.

"---- --- ----?"

"---- --- ------- ----!"

Hicks is pushing at the door, and Buffy just catches a glimpse of the carnage in the room behind as it closes. Her ears are ringing, and she can see people's mouths moving, but...

"---- - ---- ---? Not again! What was that?"

"You know it's against regs to fire grenades in confined spaces." Despite his words, Hicks has a grim smile on his face, and Vasquez matches it.

"Bite me."

She's doing something to the doorlock to seal it - just in time, as a heavy weight slams into the door from the other side. And again. The door is metal and sturdy, but Buffy gets the feeling it won't give them much time. 

She'll just have to make sure it's enough.


	4. It's Game Time

 

Buffy winces as the door shakes to another blow, then looks around at the other survivors, speaks hurriedly.

"We have to get to the landing pad, or whatever. Is there a way out past Medical?"

"Not any more." That's Ripley, looking grim. "Burke went that way. He's sealed the door."

"You let him go? How's he going to survive on his own?"

"Fuck him. He can take his chances. Maybe the aliens will recognise a kindred spirit."

"We can't--" Buffy bites back her response. They've lost one man already, a second has chosen to desert; keeping the rest alive has to be her first priority now. She counts heads - is everyone else here? Two marines - plus the Lieutenant, who's leaning against the bulkhead grey and shaky. He'd been woken from quickheal sleep just half an hour earlier, and is barely able to walk, let alone fight. Herself and Ripley. And Newt. Four effective fighters left, two non-combatants. She is _not_ going to let anyone else get killed. She promises herself that.  
_  
Okay, Buffy, that's very noble and dramatic of you. Now let's come up with some sort of plan, because there's rather too many of these things to fight them all._ There must be another way out of this corridor?

"Is there another way out of this corridor?"

"Yes! This way! Quickly!" Newt's voice pipes up, and she's fiddling with one of the ventilation grilles that line the walls. Buffy smiles her approval, quickly gestures for the others to help her.

Just as she does, there's a high-pitched screech of metal, and the pressure door starts to bend inwards. Something even heavier slams against it then, and Buffy watches it buckle. Three screws pop out of the hinges, and shiny black talons squeeze into the gap and start wrenching it wider.

"Quickly!"

The ventilation duct is narrow, but just big enough for all of them. Buffy is going to guard the rear, but Vasquez waves her past. 

"Still got three grenades, chica. They come after us..." she swipes her hand across her throat expressively. Buffy gives her a smile of approval, then goes to help Lieutenant Gorman, who's stumbling and might slow them all down. 

Newt is charging ahead, her voice drifting back to the adults who are struggling through the narrow tunnels, and Ripley cautions her to wait for them. Then they're deafened again by a pair of explosions, and the muffled sound of Vasquez's rifle firing on full automatic behind them.

_Don't look now, we're being followed.  
_  
They pick up the pace. But the twisting tunnels seem endless. Vasquez fires off her third and last grenade, and the blast shakes the walls of the duct. And there's a scream - from up ahead, not behind them. What? Buffy's rushing forward to see what's the trouble, leaving Gorman to make his own way; she can hear Ripley shouting something. More gunfire from back the way she came...

And then the firing stops dead. Vasquez? Buffy's torn... but silence is more ominous than shouting, and she knows what's coming up behind them. She retraces her steps.

Gorman's not where she left him, and she can hear something now; a pistol firing, the sound weak and reedy compared to the full-on roar of a pulse rifle. Ammo. She must be out of ammo. Buffy grips the Scythe more firmly, hurries around the corner.

Sees them both, huddled together at a crossroads in the ductwork. Vasquez's leg is stretched out straight in front of her, next to the bloody corpse of one of the monsters, and there's a smell of charred cloth and roasted flesh in the air. And beyond them...

The demons. A huge one in the lead, creeping slowly down the duct towards the two helpless humans, and at least a dozen more behind it. Gorman's got something in his hand, and Buffy gasps as she recognises a grenade, realises what he's planning to do.

Grabs it out of his hand before he can push the plunger.

"Not the worst plan... but I've got a better one. _Get out of here!_"

"Can't run..."

"So crawl! Help carry each other! Just go!" She looks down at the grenade in her hand, frowns. "Um, but first tell me how this works?"

And she turns to face the advancing demons. Hefts the Scythe. And smiles.

They're animals. Everyone keeps saying that. But as Buffy stands there confidently waiting, something passes between them. Perhaps it's recognition. 

And perhaps it's fear.

No, that's impossible. What would a pure instinctive killing machine like these possibly fear? But the demons aren't advancing any closer. They're just watching her.

Buffy listens as the sound of the two marines making their slow way down the tunnel recedes.

And then turns and runs. The demons are after her immediately, their squealing war-cries loud in her ears. She's ducking low, thankful for once in her life that she's so petite as she hurries through the narrow tunnel...

...the narrow _side_-tunnel, that is. Leading in a different direction, away from the route the rest of the group took. The monsters are close behind her, their claws rattling loudly on the metal floor and walls. She looks around desperately, searching for some way to escape -- then leaps high in the air.

The front-running demon swipes its claws through the place she was in, then looks around in confusion at the disappearance of its prey. Turns its blank eyes upwards, to see the narrow shaft in the ceiling, and Buffy's face peering over the edge at the top. It hisses in greedy anticipation.

Then looks down in confusion at the small, rounded object that just landed at its feet.

** _**KA-BLAM**!_ **

Yellow mist and blackened shreds of flesh are all that's left of the demon, and the half dozen that were just behind it. And as their acid blood pools on the floor of the passage the metal creaks and groans, and then the entire structure of the ductwork gives way, plunging all the pursuing demon army down into the depths of the complex. Buffy blinks in surprise, then grins to herself. _That went well._

At least _something_ did. By the time she works her way around to rejoin the others, she discovers the reason for the earlier shouting: Newt's gone. Slipped and fell, down through a section of the ducting none of the adults can fit through. Ripley is almost frantic, insisting she's still alive, that they have to rescue her. Buffy can't argue with that, but they've got two casualties now to take care of. And Ripley's in no mood to compromise; she's going after Newt herself, her tone of voice so fiercely protective of the girl that Buffy is unable to muster a single objection. So she ends up helping Vasquez and Gorman up out of the tunnel while Hicks volunteers to go with Ripley to rescue the final survivor.

 

The outside air is just as cold as she remembers; in fact, worse now that it's night-time. At least the rain has stopped, but there's a gale blowing just to make up for that. They huddle together on the roof, and Buffy catches sight of the one member of the marine team she hasn't met yet, the one bringing the dropship down. Bishop seems inhumanly calm as he stands in the screaming wind, delicate hands manipulating the controls as a huge, black vulture-like flying craft swoops down towards them and settles gently in to a landing. 

It's impressive stuff, straight out of a science fiction film - Buffy wishes for a moment she'd brought a camera, because Xander would love to see this. Bishop gives her a curious look as he notices her and the other two marines, but he doesn't say anything except to warn her to mind her head as the dropship's ladder extends from its hatch.

They've just helped Vasquez and Gorman on board and settled them safely into their seats when she sees Ripley and Hicks stumbling towards them. Hicks is wounded, and they're alone; their rescue mission must have failed. And according to Bishop, there's now precisely twenty-six minutes until the whole place goes up in a thermonuclear explosion. Time to leave.

"We're not leaving."

_We're not?_ But as the dropship takes off Ripley explains. There's still a chance - a small chance – that the girl is still alive. If they hurry, they can get her back.

Buffy watches the older woman as she grimly takes down weapons from the racking. Assembling an arsenal. She takes in her air of firmly suppressed fear overlaid with iron-hard determination. Comes to a decision.

"Leave it to me. I'll get her back."

"I made a promise." Ripley's voice brooks no arguments. She slaps a magazine into her pulse rifle, watches the counter tick up to '95'. Buffy recognises stubbornness as great as her own; concedes the point.

"Okay. But I'm coming with you."

"No sense risking another life. If I'm not back in twenty minutes--"

"It'll be because we're _both_ dead." Buffy glares at her, holding her eyes in challenge, and after a moment Ripley smiles in resignation and, perhaps, a hint of gratitude.

"Your choice, honey. Better take a gun."

"I don't--" Buffy hesitates, then shrugs. Who knows what they're about to face? "Sure."

And then she smiles. "Ooh! Are those grenades?!"


	5. They Don't Kill You

 

Five minutes later, they're crammed into an elevator car, descending into the bowels of the reactor. The heat is stifling, and sinister seismic rumbles shake the car as it creaks downwards. Ripley strips off her jacket, refastening the combat webbing around her torso and settling her taped-together weapons at her hip. Buffy checks that the Scythe is easily accessible on her back, and looks dubiously at the rifle she's carrying. _It's just a weapon, nothing to be nervous about._ And these demons - aliens, whatever - are certainly vulnerable to bullets. She's seen that with her own eyes.

Preparations complete, they stand side by side as the elevator continues to descend. Buffy eyes her companion curiously, clears her throat, breaks the silence.

"So, um, have you fought these things before?"

A long, painful pause. Then: "Hardly 'fought'. I met one and survived. Guess that makes me the expert."

"So do you have any special powers-- um, I mean _skills_? Training?"

"I can drive a power loader. And I used to be a qualified starship navigator, till they took my certificate away." Buffy looks at her in surprise and grudging admiration as Ripley asks, "How about you, honey?"

"Well, uh, it's kind of my job. Killing things like these--"

"--but you're just a normal person and you're going to fight them like this?--"  
"--You go out and face these things _again and again_? Every day?--"

"--You're braver than me."  
"--You're braver than me."

As they both speak their eyes meet, and Ripley chuckles sardonically.

"Apparently we're both crazy."

Buffy pulls open the door of the elevator and steps out into the dimly lit corridor beyond. Glances cautiously around. "Tell me about it."

Ripley pulls out a tracker, studies it for a moment. "That way." Buffy takes point, senses straining for danger. Sweat drips off her forehead, stains the sleeves of her t-shirt. The metal framework of the building seems almost organic, throbbing and pulsing around them like some huge animal, and they're deep in its stomach. Behind her there's a hiss and sudden burst of pinkish light as Ripley lights a flare, drops it on the ground.

"Help us find our way back."

"Yeah, 'cause that worked really well for Theseus."

"Who?"

"Uh, never mind. Good idea." They've reached a crossroads, metal ladders and catwalks leading deeper down into the complex. "Which way?"

"Left and down. We're close."

Slowly now. The walls seem to close in, rounded and black in the torchlight. Buffy touches them curiously; a kind of hardened resin coats the surfaces, crunches underfoot. Their enemies have been busy down here. Turning this world into their home.

The tracker in Ripley's hand is bleeping faster, and she suddenly stops, looked around in a puzzled way - then stoops to the ground with a cry of dismay. Standing up, she holds a metal bracelet in her hand. The strap is broken, and there are tears in her eyes as her resolve cracks at last. Buffy bites her lip, struggling to think of something comforting to say. "Maybe she's--"

Then holds up her hand as Slayer hearing picks up a sound in the distance. Hardly the most comforting thing in the world to hear: a little girl screaming in terror - but at this moment it's the best sound she could possibly imagine. She's off at a run, Ripley trailing behind her. Ducking under projecting pipework, dashing around a corner, and then she sees her in the distance, embedded in a wall, and an open egg in front of her, and one of the crablike larval demons crawling out towards her. Too far to reach in time. 

Buffy doesn't hesitate. She levels the rifle one-handed and pulls the trigger, still running full tilt, and the bullet cracks out and hit the demon dead centre, sending it tumbling and lifeless across the room.

Then she ploughs to a halt and stares at the gun in her hand in astonishment, as if she's only just noticed what she's holding. Then smiles, slightly embarrassed, and shrugs. Ripley has caught her up, rushing over to the entrapped Newt, and there's a touching if hurried reunion. The girl is entombed in layer after layer of the resin, and getting her out is proving difficult. And slow. Too slow.

The hiss is the only warning she gets, but it's enough. Glistening black armour and slime-dripping jaws fill her view, then the rifle in her hand is snarling and the demon blows apart into yellow spray. But more are on the way. 

"Keep them off!" Buffy tears into the resin shrouding Newt, Slayer strength making short work of it as Ripley puts her back to the wall and opens fire on the sinister creatures that seemed to be emerging from the very walls. Then the girl is free, and it's time to move. Backing slowly down the corridor, muzzle flares lighting the darkness in staccato bursts. But they've got themselves turned around in the rush and confusion, and Buffy is just turning to ask Ripley if she recognises where they are when she almost collides with the older woman.

Who is standing stock-still as if paralysed. And as Buffy gazes around, she understands her companion's reaction. Her own blood runs cold. She fights to suppress her panic reaction as she looks round the floor of the large chamber. At the demon eggs that surround them; dozens of them, hundreds. Covering every flat surface. An entire army ready to hatch; an apocalypse in the making.

And as her eyes adjust to the darkness, she sees it. Hunched in the darkness yet immeasurably vast; the architect of the apocalypse. The demon queen. Belly gravid with teeming death. Cruel jaws that could swallow her whole. The queen hisses, slow and lazy, breath steaming from her mouth as she turns to look at the intruders. Her eyes are dull and animal; but Buffy has an impression of a calculating hunger, an alien cunning that is more terrifying for its pure single-minded focus. No visible summons goes out, but suddenly the entrances to the chamber are all blocked by warrior demons; the queen's guards come to her defence. Buffy grips her rifle and prepares to sell her life dearly.

Then almost jumps out of her skin as Ripley triggers her flamethrower, sending a jet of fire boiling out into the chamber. She didn't aim at anything, and Buffy is still trying to work out why she did it when Ripley drops the muzzle of the weapon to aim directly at the eggs around them. She looks up pointedly at the queen, and Buffy feels herself grin in unashamed delight at the stratagem.

That is, assuming the queen can make the connection, recognise the threat. Make the bargain. Humans and demons stand motionless for a long, long time; then another of the imperceptible signals goes out, and the demons retreat, clearing the way. It worked. It worked!

The three of them back carefully out of the chamber. Buffy feels a sudden twinge of guilt; she came here to kill this creature, after all. She's dealt with bigger things before, and faced larger armies - though not both together, at least not with so little help. But she firmly suppresses her feelings. In ten minutes this whole area will be a cloud of radioactive debris; that will slay the demon just as comprehensively as anything she can manage with axe or stake.

But as she turns to give the queen one last look, she happens to meet its eyes, and senses rather than sees the glitter of malice within them. And that's why she looks around just in time to see the eggs open silently, as if by command. Releasing their deadly payloads of alien larvae. Her gun snarls, blasting them apart before they can attack, and Ripley whirls in shock, taking in the situation, the betrayal, instantly. The look she turns on the queen is wordless, but speaks as loudly as if she'd shouted aloud: "Oh, you did _not_ just do that."

Then she fires the flamethrower, swings it to and fro, turning the chamber into an inferno. Fulfilling her threat. The eggs sizzle and pop in the heat, and the queen shrills in rage and despair and hatred. Buffy joins her own firepower to the storm of destruction... then remembers the grenades. She arcs them over the burning floor directly at the queen, sees the blasts tearing huge gobbets of flesh out of her swollen pregnant abdomen. The flames rise higher, blocking her sight, so she pulls out a handful of the grenades, tosses them into the centre of the fire. Picks up Newt, grabs Ripley by the arm and drags her out of there, fast as she can.

The fringes of the blast catch them, hurling her forward as she shields Newt with her body. Then they're up and running. The flares light their way back to the elevator, and the shaking of the metal catwalks under them reminds her of how little time they have left.

Then they reach the elevators, and see in horror that the car has returned to the surface. Ripley bangs the call button, then runs over and hits the other one as well. Buffy stands impatiently waiting, watching their path back - and so she's the first to see the huge shape stalking through the red-lit darkness. 

How she survived Buffy can't know, but here she is: the demon queen, scarred and burned and hungry for vengeance. And the elevator car is creeping down towards them, painfully slowly. Have they been spotted? She _must_ be able to see them, or smell them. The car still isn't down. The temperature continues to climb, the thermonuclear core at the building's heart approaching critical. The elevator still hasn't arrived. And the queen lifts her head, swings it around, and starts moving directly towards them...  
_  
*Ding!*  
_  
In an frantic tangle of limbs and desperation they cram into the elevator, hit the button; just as the queen squeals her warcry and runs full tilt at them. Her body slams into the wire of the elevator cage, bending it out of shape, but they're rising, they're out of reach, they're safe.

The jubilation is cut off abruptly as they reach the surface - and the dropship is nowhere to be seen. The others have already gone. They've been left behind.

Buffy walks to the edge of the catwalk, looks down into nothingness. The wind howls and lightning crashes, electrical discharges curling around and lancing from building to building. She remembers standing in a high place like this once before. Facing her death.

Ripley gasps in new horror beside her, and Buffy turns to see the _other_ elevator is rising to the surface. She can't even act surprised as the demon queen squeezes her vast bulk out of it and looks around for them. Of course she's followed them; it's the way these things happen, isn't it? She checks her pulse rifle, takes in the ammunition counter at a glance and drops it. Draws the Scythe, and looks with clear eyes into the face of her nightmares.

Then is almost pulled off her feet as Ripley grabs her arm. The dropship is circling in to land, and her companion is clinging to the landing ladder, Newt already peering down from inside. Buffy doesn't hesitate; she leaps up, past Ripley, pulling her inside. The queen shrills her hatred, deprived of her prey, as Ripley yells "Punch it!" to the unseen pilot. The dropship slews in the gale-force winds, its landing legs catching for a moment on some debris, then it's roaring into the sky.

Behind them, Buffy watches the buildings of the settlement dwindle rapidly into the distance... then hears Bishop say in his dry, emotionless voice "Better not look."

"Why not?" She turns to him to ask the question - and then the entire cabin of the dropship lights up like the inside of a flashbulb. Hard-edged white light burns through her frantically closed eyelids, and a wave of furnace heat roars past them. Then incredible noise, and they're being hurled around in the turbulence from Hell, Bishop struggling to bring the dropship back under control. As her eyesight gradually returns to normal, Buffy looks back through the rear windows: and sees a pillar of fire towering high into the sky behind them. As she watches, the smoke and debris reach the upper levels of the atmosphere and begin to spread out in a canopy, and she suddenly laughs in pure delight.

"It really does look like a mushroom! That is so cool!"

They are safe at last.


	6. The Only Way To Be Sure

 

As they leave the atmosphere and match orbits with the starship _Sulaco_, Buffy is as excited as a four year old in a toyshop at Christmas. She's in space! Her nose is practically pressed to the window as she stares out at the countless stars, burning so steadily, and the curve of the planet beneath them. Newt watches her with amused tolerance, and in response to Buffy's gentle probing shyly admits that she's been in space once before when she was very small, but she doesn't remember much because she was asleep most of the time.

Ripley joins in the conversation now, and Buffy discovers - through careful questioning to hide her ignorance - that they'll all have to go into some sort of hibernation for the journey back to Earth. That sounds good, actually; she was wondering how she could arrange to slip away without rousing too much awkwardness, but she also doesn't want to miss anything. With the big bad demon queen blasted to nuclear oblivion, she deserves a holiday, surely? A holiday _in space_. Once the others go into cold sleep she can activate the portal to go back home, but until then she's going to see as much as possible.

The dropship passes through the airlock, and Buffy waits impatiently for the inner doors to open. She understands the reason why they have to do this, but it seems to take forever for the huge chamber to fill up with air. At last the process is complete, though, and Bishop hovers the ship down to a gentle touchdown on the steel deck of the landing bay.

Space was, of course, huge; but somehow this internal space feels even bigger: perhaps because it's man-made. Buffy has to be dragged away from the window - she's just spotted a rack of enormous, vicious-looking missiles stacked in one corner of the room, and is speculating on how many vampires she could kill with one of them if they were obliging enough to all stand shoulder-to-shoulder in a circle. But Ripley and Bishop are discussing getting stretchers to take the casualties up to Sickbay, and Buffy feels guilty then, and decides to help.

Besides, maybe Sickbay will have even more cool stuff to see, like cryogenic tubes or surgical robots, or one of those holographic scanner thingies like the cute doctor guy used in that episode of '_Firefly_'. (Unfortunately, she's gathered that there won't be an actual cute doctor guy there in person. According to Ripley the ship is mostly automated... they're the only living things on board.)

Or so she thinks, until she's walking down the ramp of the dropship and notices something wet dripping down from above and landing on the deck with a hiss.

And melting its way into the steel.

She opens her mouth to call a warning... and something huge and black and shiny bursts out of Bishop's chest. It's sharp and jagged. Like a harpoon. White fluid bursts from the wound. More of it bubbles out of his silently working mouth. Something in the back of Buffy's mind is going "Huh? He's not human?" He's rising into the air. Arms and legs flailing madly. Buffy's hand moves automatically to the Scythe slung on her back. Ripley and Newt are staring in shock. She can see now that it's a demon tail impaling him...

And then Bishop is torn in half in a flash of claws, and white blood and body parts fly in all direction, and a vast, vengeful shape is squeezing her bulk out of the landing leg bay where she's stowed away, and Buffy is shouting "Get out of here" to the other two, and she's bracing herself to attack, but in her mind she's thinking that this thing already survived a whole bunch of grenades being fired at it, and she doesn't know how to kill it. _She doesn't know how to kill it._

  
Feet clatter on the metal grating. The queen's head whips around instantly at the noise, sees Newt and Ripley fleeing for safety. She hisses hungrily, and Buffy knows she has to distract her - and quickly. So she may not know how to kill it _yet_... but she'll find out. 

Violence often works. Violence and witty quips work together even better.

"Hey! Hey, you! Evil bitch-monster of death!" The queen turns back to regard the small, blonde human who dares to stand before her. Buffy puts her hands on her hips, tilts her head to one side. "You know, this 'unkillable enemy that comes back five times in the final act' thing is getting pretty old. I don't think the forces of Evil are really trying anymore. You need to get a new scriptwriter."

The huge demon returns her gaze, tail lashing from side to side in perplexity... but her brain is designed to reach only one conclusion. She lunges suddenly straight at Buffy, claws extended to smash and tear. But the Slayer anticipates the move, diving under the queen's blow and rolling between her legs, swinging the Scythe around with all her strength.

It scrapes off the queen's armour in a shower of sparks, leaving nothing but a blurry scrape mark across the black chitin. 

_That's not good._ The queen moves around ponderously, without the lightning-fast reflexes of her smaller children, but the strength of her blows when she strikes the deck - just where Buffy was lying an eyeblink earlier - is hard enough to crumple steel. _Keep moving_, she tells herself; _one hit and you're dead_. As for killing it herself: still very much a work in progress. Slow progress. She needs better weapons.

And then the cargo bay door opens and Ripley strides out clad in half a ton of steel and hydraulics, and Buffy stares open-mouthed in shock and delight. So _that_ must be what she meant by a 'power loader'. Buffy decides that contrary to initial impressions, she approves of Ripley. Far from running off to hide, she's come back to help with a better weapon.

The queen forgets about the annoying small human beneath her feet, more eager to challenge an opponent closer to her own size. Buffy doesn't care; she's got a ringside seat as Ripley manoeuvres the power loader closer then swipes at the demon with its huge steel claws, sending the monster flying into a pile of crates. It scrambles to its feet, but Buffy cheers as its head is caught in the loader's hydraulic grip, squeezed tight. But then the queen's tail lashes around, slamming into the cockpit and almost knocking the huge machine off its feet. Ripley struggles for balance and the demon wriggles free of her grip.

Buffy sees the tail flex, sees a stinger at its tip the size of a swordblade, and shouts a warning as the queen lunges forward with it, striking through the bars protecting Ripley's seat. She twists her head frantically to the side and the vicious weapon misses; but the queen is withdrawing it ready for another blow. She might not be so lucky next time.

Then the giant demon feels her tail snag on something. Buffy's got back into the game. Ripley needs her help, and she's got a plan. She waits for her moment, waits until the queen's lashing tail swings closer to the deck, waits... then leaps and swings. The Scythe slams down on the tail, pinning it to the deck; but even now she's barely notched the armour. The queen shrills in anger, yanks her tail upwards...

...Just as Buffy presses down on the Scythe with all the strength and determination she possesses. Demon and Slayer muscles combine together, and the mystical edge of the Scythe carves through the demonic armour and cleaves the tail clean off. It twitches wildly, the stinger leaking poison, and a great jet of yellow blood sprays out, catching Buffy on the side as she hastily rolls aside. Her gasp of agony is lost in the queen's desperate squeals of protest; the demon is thrashing around in pain, and Ripley takes the opportunity to grab her in the power loader's claws once again. 

The motors of the loader howl with strain, but the queen's armour resists the pressure. Buffy's crying tears of pain as she hastily strips off her jacket, her body awash in a sea of fire from armpit to hip. She's got to get back into the fight, Ripley needs her help... she doesn't recognise the noise behind her and almost falls down the opening shaft. There's a remote control on the power loader, and Ripley's opened the inner airlock door. She shuffles over towards it in a clumsy dance, demon and machine locked in a deadly embrace, and tries to throw her into the pit.

The queen's flailing claw clamps onto the loader's leg, and pulls it down with her. Buffy tries to stand, but her legs tremble and collapse under her, and so she drags herself over to the edge. Shiny black limbs and yellow steel are a tangled mess at the bottom, and Ripley is urgently unstrapping herself and trying to climb the ladder out.

Then the queen whips out her tail and tries to wrap it about Ripley's foot... but the mangled stump hits the wall a metre below her, and Ripley drags herself over the lip of the pit with a gasp of relief. Pushes the button to close the inner door, then grins viciously as she poises her hand over the other button.

"Screw you, bitch." 

Her hand slams down. The heavy steel blocks out most of the sound, but there's a faint inhuman scream of anger and protest... then nothing.

It's over.

Buffy uses the Scythe to prop herself up as she struggles to her feet. Gives Ripley a wan smile of triumph, waves off her concern. "We were on our way to Sickbay anyway, weren't we?"

 

Half an hour later, the survivors of the expedition are all gathered in the ship's living quarters, patched up and as healthy as modern medicine can get them. (Or modern robotics technology, in the case of Bishop. Buffy's still kicking herself she didn't realise he was an android; after all, she's had enough practice spotting them by now. Though he's not nearly as pretty as _her_ robot double was.)  She's just about to ask for a guided tour when she frowns in thought. A nasty thought, which has just hit her...

"Um, this is a warship, isn't it? An armed spaceship?"

"That's right, Miss. She's a _Conestoga_-class rapid response military transport, with--"

"Okay, I get the picture." She's rapidly discovering that Lieutenant Gorman can be both pompous and long-winded, although he's still quite subdued after the almost-massacre of his command. "So it has weapons, right? Laser beams, or, I don't know, photon torpedoes, or whatever?"

"What sort of target were you planning to hit?" Hicks sounds amused, but Buffy isn't joking.

"What do you think? The big momma demon is out there floating somewhere."

"Screw her. She's dead."

Buffy looks Vasquez in the eye, then sweeps her gaze around all of them.

"You sure of that? You sure being in space will kill her?"

There's a long moment of silence. When it breaks, Ripley's voice is almost as cold as space itself.

"We'll do it. Now."

The _Sulaco_'s fire control centre is an impressive bank of terminals with a large screen in the middle. Buffy takes the seat before anyone can stop her, turns to Gorman for instructions. He guides her through the process - it's mostly automated, anyway - and it's only minutes before the ship's scanners pick up a small unreflective mass in close orbit. Buffy breathes a silent sigh of relief... she'd half expected the demon queen to be clinging to the outer hull, ready to hitch a ride back to Earth. 

The computers confirm the target, present a fire control solution. Buffy turns to look at Ripley, smiles grimly. "This time, it's my turn." Then she pushes the button.

Electromagnets buzz to life and a quarter-ton mass of tungsten steel is propelled down a tube at ten times the speed of sound. Milliseconds later it smashes through the floating space object... which abruptly vanishes from the radar screen. It seems almost anticlimactic, and she's just getting up to leave when Ripley says "Wait."

All eyes turn to her.

"You've also got ground attack weapons? You can bombard a planetary target?"

"That's right."

"Buffy, set up a new attack. Coordinates 103.2 north, 265.4 west." 

"Splainy?"

"What? Oh... it's where we landed last time I was here. Where Burke sent those poor damn fools to their deaths. A ruin, a wrecked ship, I don't know - but it's full of eggs. Full of them. So use the biggest damn weapon we've got."

"I can't authorise that--"

"It's where they came from, Gorman. It's the source. We end this now."

He hesitates a moment; then nods in acceptance. "Do it."

Buffy keys in the codes, then looks at the list of weapons available. Her lips curl in innocent joy as she sees what's at the top of the column. She's Slayed with a lot of different weapons in her past, but she's never used one of _these_ before. She pushes the button.

Nothing happens, except for a blinking red light. Huh?

"You need authorisation." Gorman leans over, taps a code into the panel. Then looks over at Hicks "Corporal?"

"Yes, sir." He smiles at Ripley as he walks over to enter his own code. "Never done this before."

"Your first time is always the best."

Buffy's only half-aware of the banter. She's looking at the panel, and the little message that's just appeared on it. _'Nuclear weapons release authorised'_. She reaches out her hand again. Hesitates.

"Ripley, perhaps you should do this?"

"You go ahead, honey. You've earned the right."

"No. _I_ want to do it." And all eyes turn to see Newt, who's standing in the door to the chamber looking totally focussed and determined. "We're going to blow them up, right? Destroy them all for ever and ever?"

"That's right, sweetheart." Ripley looks around at the others, sees only agreement. "Come here then."

She picks up the little girl and carries her over to the terminal. Newt's tiny hand covers the button, and after a moment Ripley lays her own on top of hers. And then Buffy puts her hand on the top of the pile, and the three of them exchange a glance, and Newt pipes up "On three. One, two, _three_..."

There's a distant clunk from somewhere in the ship. A signal appears on the scanners; a number counting down to zero.

And then far below on the planet's surface, a small sun burns with fusion heat, then fades slowly into a radioactive afterglow.

This time, it really is over.

 

The others are already asleep, the walls of their cryochambers misting slowly as the temperature drops. Ripley looks questioningly at her. "You sure you can manage it by yourself? I can put you under first if you want..."

"No, I'll be fine. You go ahead. I just need to, uh, stretch my legs first. Maybe we'll be able to talk more back on Earth." She wishes it were true. "Pleasant dreams."

"I'm planning _not_ to dream. Finally - and it's thanks to you."

"No problem." Buffy smiles, watching as Ripley's cryochamber closes. She reaches in her pocket for the crystal Willow gave her just before she left, then hesitates.

_No. She's being paranoid_.

When you've been a Slayer as long as Buffy has, you learn to trust your paranoia. She dashes back to the cargo bay, walks under the dropship, staring up into the landing leg mechanism. It looks safe enough...

She does a standing jump up, grabs the lip of the bay, peers inside.

Darkness. There's nothing there.

Or... wait. Right there at the back, something is catching the light. She needs a flashlight, or something... she remembers. Goes back into the dropship, picks up a handful of those flares Ripley was using earlier, and returns. Lights a flare, tosses it into the dark void.

And rolls her eyes as she sees what it reveals. Two large, lumpy demon eggs nestled side by side at the back of the landing leg bay. The queen must have brought them with her, or laid them in there, or something...

"I _knew_ it! I just knew it!"

The Scythe whistles around, and the eggs shatter. The embryonic demons inside fall to the ground, half-formed and helpless, and Buffy slices them to pieces. Then for good measure kicks and prods the pieces down to the deck, and shovels them into the airlock. She remembers how Ripley operated the controls, and repeats her actions, and they're gone. She gets the feeling she's just averted something terrible.

This time, surely, it's-- no. Don't say it. You'll only jinx things.

She takes out the crystal, places it on the deck, and stamps on it. Jumps back as the portal shoots up from the glittering shards, stretches out into a wavering Slayer-sized tear in the fabric of space.

She takes a last look around, steps through, and goes home.

 

_The End.  
_


End file.
